Alternative-Based Confirmation – Activation

Welcome to the second blog post about Alternative-Based Confirmation (ABC) in SAP S/4HANA advanced ATP. For an overview and the first post in this blog series, go to Alternative-Based Confirmation – An Overview. This blog post focuses on the activation of ABC.

General activation concept

A multi-level approach is used to activate Alternative-Based Confirmation: the first level allows a general activation on ATP checking group level and the second level is the alternative control defined in the Configure Alternative Control app. This allows a fine granular determination of substitution strategies based on characteristic value combinations.

Customizing and SSCUI

Depending on S/4HANA consumption model, the first activation level is accessed  in the SAP Customizing Implementation Guide (aka IMG, for SAP S/4HANA) or self-service configuration UI (aka SSCUI, for SAP S/4HANA cloud):

IMG Activity – Configure Enhanced Check Methods by Document Purpose

The Enhanced Check Methods SSCUI is available in the Manage Your Solution app

Configure Your Solution – Enhanced Check Methods

Configure Alternative Control

To be able to access the second activation level, you require the Order Fulfillment Manager business role. Alternative control setup involves two steps:

Step 1: Manage Characteristic Combinations

In this step, you define group of characteristics whose document values can be used to identify if, for a given document, ABC requires activation.
This is defined in the Manage Characteristics Combination app:

Manage Characteristic Combination

1. Indicates the name and description of characteristics combination.
2. Usage indicates the application/process for which the characteristic combination is being defined.
3. Catalog Type indicates the business document for which the characteristic combinations is being defined.
4. The Characteristics section will contain all the characteristics that belong to this characteristic combination. The Ordinal Number defines the sequence in which the characteristic value combinations are maintained.

Step 2: Configure Alternative Control

In this step, you define an access for the characteristic combination created in step 1. Accesses are used to define the characteristic value combination which are then compared against the values in the business document to determine if ABC is active: if ABC is active, the correct strategy is retrieved:

Configure Alternative Control

1. Indicates the combination against which the access is created.
2. Sequence Number indicates the sequence in which accesses are processed in the business document to determine the matching characteristic value combination.
3. The Status field indicates if the characteristic value combination is considered during the determination of alternatives.
4. Execute ABC indicates if ABC is to be executed if the characteristic value combination is matched: if the flag is not set, ABC is deactivated for the value combination
5. Substitution Strategy defines how ABC is to be executed.

Example

Let’s use a real-life example scenario for milk products to understand how ABC can be activated:

Milk products are sold to consumers using different distribution channels with the help of independent distributors, retailers, and wholesalers who belong to different customers groups and who have differing delivery priorities.

Let’s consider the following scenarios to activate ABC for sales organization KANI:

• For order placed in wholesale channel(WH):
  • For items with delivery priority 01, both product and plant substitution must be enabled.
  • For items with delivery priority 02, only plant substitutions must be enabled.
  • For other items, ABC is not relevant.

• For order placed in retail channel(RT):
  • For items with delivery priority 01, only plant substitution must be enabled. For orders placed by customers belonging to customer group (LO), both product and plant substitution must be enabled
  • For items with other delivery priority in the channel, ABC is not relevant. For orders placed by customers belonging to customer group (LO) with delivery priority 02, plant substitution must be enabled.

To enable the scenarios detailed above, you use the Configure Alternative Control app as follows:

As a first step, you use the Manage Characteristic Combination app to create two characteristic combinations, as shown below.

Combination 1

Combination of Sales Organization, Distribution Channel, Division, Delivery Priority and Customer Group:

Combination of Sales Organization, Distribution Channel, Division, Delivery Priority and Customer Group

Combination 2

Combination of Sales Organization, Distribution Channel, Division and Delivery Priority:

Combination of Sales Organization, Distribution Channel ,Division and Delivery Priority

Next, use the Configure Alternative Control app to create accesses for each of the combinations created above. For each of the accesses, you also maintain the characteristic value combinations and enable ABC based on the requirements above.

Access 1

This access contains the characteristic value combinations for all special customers for distribution channel ‘Retail’ and assigns the appropriate substitution strategy to provide maximum confirmation for the requirements using ABC:

Access 1: Characteristic Value Combinations with Substitution Strategy

Access 2

This access contains the characteristic value combinations for Distribution Channel and Delivery Priority and assigns the appropriate substitution strategy to provide maximum confirmation for the requirements using ABC:

Access 2: Characteristic Value Combinations with Substitution Strategy

Saving this last access completes the activation of ABC. The substitution strategy defines how ABC is executed. This will be described in our next blog post about ABC. Stay tuned!

To summarize –

To enable ABC during availability check,

• The ABC needs to be activated for the ATP checking group
• The Alternative control needs to be defined using ‘Configure Alternative Control‘ application

Hope you like this blog post. Your feedbacks are welcome in the comments section below.

More Information

Alternative-Based Confirmation –https://help.sap.com/viewer/f132c385e0234fe68ae9ff35b2da178c/LATEST/en-US/61ce286def63461487ee039b7c375070.html

Object and Value Determination – https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_S4HANA_ON-PREMISE/f132c385e0234fe68ae9ff35b2da178c/29a935f4ebc042a88a795f1276de5a54.html?version=2021.001

Questions? Ask here – https://answers.sap.com/tags/314fb51c-b3d3-4169-a015-fc9e9e510969